There are many types of food mixers ranging from small hand held appliances to very large mixers (three to six feet tall) for commercial use. In any of these mixers, some of the ingredients may cling to the inside wall of the mixing bowl so that the final product is improperly mixed or does not have the correct ratio of ingredients mixed uniformly throughout the product.
In the smaller mixers that may be used in the home, for example, it is simple to use a spoon or the like in order to scrape away the ingredients clinging to the wall while the mixer is running. If the spoon is caught in the mixer blades, the only likely effect would be to produce some noise.
However, in the large commercial or industrial size food mixers that may be used in bakeries, restaurants, food processors or the like, the problem is not so easy to solve. For one thing, the commercial size mixers are powerful enough to seriously injure a person, perhaps even tearing an arm or hand from the body if a hand or sleeve is caught in the mixer tool. Therefore, this class of mixer usually has a guard in the form of a basket of heavy steel bars surrounding the access area so that no one can put his hand in or too close to the mixing bowl while the mixer is running. Such a guard basket is described in a copending U.S. patent application, Ser. No. 08/444,549, filed May. 19, 1995, and assigned to the Middleby Marshall Company of Elgin, Ill.
Another problem is that the bowl is so large that a person cannot comfortably and manually scrape the internal bowl wall while the mixer is running. This is especially true if the mixer bowl must be scraped continuously over a relatively long period of time.
Still another problem is that industrial size mixers do not always operate in the same direction. Some mixers rotate clockwise and other mixers rotate counterclockwise. However, it would be expensive and counter-productive if it is necessary to provide different bowl scrapers for each direction of operation.
Yet another problem relates to clean up. The invention uses a rubber scraper blade mounted on a stainless steel mandrel. Depending upon a number of things such as size, closeness of fit, etc., it may be desirable to place either the entire unit or the rubber scraper in a dishwasher in order to clean up. This, in turn, introduces problems of providing a scraper with a rubber boot reliably secured in place, while still enabling a quick connect or disconnect as the scraper is installed or removed.